


Portraiture

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 21:03:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14679465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: Mal and Evie unknowingly sketch each other during class





	Portraiture

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

Babies learned to walk, falling and failing step by wobbly step until what was once a struggle came as naturally as breathing. A person didn’t think about walking, it simply happened, one foot after the other. There were such things that came naturally to artists, too, little instinctive tics that only needed a pencil or a pen to come flowing from a creative mind; how to accurately place the features on a delicate face, pressing just so to cast a shadow, the exact stroke needed to bring a smirk or a frown to life.  
  
Mal had her own personal set of artistic instincts, instincts that were serving her well during her boring history lesson where she couldn’t care less what happened to Snow White after she and her prince rode off into the sunset. The sun on her face as she sat beside the window lulled her dangerously close to sleep in the middle of class, so idle eyes and an idle hand took to the blank notebook page in front of her that she had failed to take notes on. Her mind shut off—she didn’t need it here—and she simply drew.  
  
Her hand charted its own path, expertly putting together a series of dips and curves into a pair of what would be raspberry colored lips, just as soon as Mal could get her hands on a colored pencil. A flick of the wrist at just the right angle feathered dark lashes onto darker eyes, and created perfectly shaped eyebrows just above. Mal’s notebook would not play host to notes today, but to drawing after senseless drawing of a captivating girl looking back at Mal with mystifying eyes holding both promises and secrets.  
  
Drawing after drawing of Evie.  
  
When Mal had a mind to check back into reality she was startled to find the page of her notebook absolutely littered with sketches of her best friend. She shouldn’t have been startled, really—Mal drew Evie like people walked down the street—but still she hurriedly flipped her notebook shut, hands settling on top of it like trying to keep a cursed box closed and locked. Evie was drawn in the pages like Mal’s eyes were drawn to Evie just a few desks in front of her, head diligently ducked down and pencil furiously scribbling as she took careful and detailed notes on the lesson being taught.  
  
Yet although beautiful, with strands of rich, deep blue cascading past her shoulders in elegant waves, there was little to be told from the back of Evie’s head. She couldn’t possibly focus on note-taking when the model she’d sketched out was in need of the perfect accessory to top off her ensemble of a short black skirt, killer boots, and purple collared shirt. A little necklace, Evie decided, nestled neatly in the hollow of her model’s throat. A necklace bearing a striking resemblance to a dragon insignia a certain best friend of hers sported on the back of a leather jacket. And on the subject of striking resemblances, the model herself carried one too, what with her full lips, soft cheeks, and dangerous eyes. It was Mal, a tiny Mal down on Evie’s paper, trying out the various fashions that sprang to Evie’s distracted mind.  
  
A spaghetti strap dress that hugged and curved all the way down, a ripped t-shirt and a studded jean jacket, black slacks and a violet blazer. Evie’s natural artistic tendency was to sketch her designs on a body and save the face for later, for the face wasn’t important, just how the clothes fell and folded and hung. But here and now, Evie paid extra special attention to the faces of her graphite models, as each and every one somehow became Mal when her hand took the pencil and worked independently of her mind.  
  
A quiet gasp froze her when she saw what her traitorous hand had done, when Mal with her infuriatingly damnable smirk strutted a closet full of imaginary fashion all over the pages of Evie’s notebook. She moved slowly then, setting her pencil aside and shutting the spiral like a mischievous child gingerly creeping away from the scene of a crime before their mother could pinpoint the guilty culprit. It wasn’t the first time a day of note-taking had been ruined by a best friend’s beautiful face, and it wouldn’t be the last—Evie had several pages to prove it.  
  
A bell ringing was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing for Mal to hurriedly shove her notebook into the biggest pocket of her backpack, out of sight and out of mind, and a curse in the form of having to say goodbye to Evie until the end of the schoolday a whole three hours later. It sucked enough, not getting to sit next to her but relegated to sitting two desks behind her. It sucked even more for Evie, not even able to wistfully watch Mal from afar the way Mal could do to her. Yes, Evie had long since admitted to herself that wistfully watching Mal was a thing she liked to do, but that was as far as she’d let herself think on the matter.  
  
“E…”   
  
Mal was right there among the hustle and bustle of classmates packing up and scooting out of chairs, touching Evie’s hand in a soft and tentative way to get her attention. Well, to Evie it was soft and tentative. Unfortunately for Mal, it was one of those same instinctive tics she’d had to pick up and learn after coming to Auradon, the careful touch she employed with other people serving as a gesture sadly akin to  _“Please don’t run, I’m not going to hurt you.”_  
  
“I guess I’ll see you back in our room,” Evie said, slipping her bag over her shoulder and curling fingers around the strap.  
  
“I’ll see you,” Mal nodded slowly, like she didn’t want to move too fast and blur the sight of Evie for a single fraction of a second.  
  
Too often lately they seemed to linger on their goodbyes, both girls standing longer than they should as if expectantly in wait for something. Or perhaps it was simply a refresher course, a moment to trace one another’s features with their attentive eyes so the next boring class would see even more exceptionally detailed drawings of Mal and Evie.  
  
“Um…I have to get to chemistry,” Evie’s hand again worked on its own as her mind strayed far away, pointing to the door while curious brown eyes stared at Mal’s lips. She wasn’t sure whose spell she was trying to break first.  
  
“Oh. Yeah.”  
  
There was certainly some sort of daze in Mal’s voice. A daze brought about by being trapped by the sight of cobalt shadowed eyelids falling low over chocolate eyes. If Mal and Evie lingered on those particular goodbyes any longer they’d be saying hello to each other come an afternoon detention. So they left, Evie for chemistry and Mal for whatever class she had next, she honestly couldn’t remember, but her steps automatically took her there regardless. One foot after the other.  
  
It was far easier to stop thinking about Evie when she wasn’t around, Mal was in the clear until that final blessing and curse of a bell rang and signaled the end of the day. Sometimes Evie got back to the dorm room first, sometimes it was Mal, but today they found each other in the halls and made the walk back together. They often had a habit of finding each other. There was a silence between them, a strange silence that came as the result of runaway daydreams that took their thoughts and stormed off with them; thoughts Evie entertained of what it would be like to hold Mal’s hand, Mal’s thoughts wondering what would happen if she someday took Evie into the crook of a little corridor alcove and kissed her there under late afternoon sunlight.  
  
Yet Mal knew that her day so far had been governed by pure reflex more than rational thought, and didn’t dare let pure reflex take over and accidentally lose her in a first and sudden kiss with Evie. She distracted herself with far safer thoughts when they reached the dorm room, when Mal twisted the handle and swung the door open to let Evie inside first. Mal had chemistry first thing in the morning, when a half-asleep brain was the thing that kept her from her studies, not daydreams of kisses with best friends. Evie had chemistry in the afternoon, eager and alert and ready to learn.  
  
“Evie, can I borrow your chemistry notes again today?” Mal didn’t allow herself a moment to rest after a long six hours, trading a classroom desk for a wooden dorm desk and settling in to start on homework.  
  
“Only if I can borrow your history ones.”  
  
Mal should have allowed herself that rest, a moment or a minute to recharge and sharpen her focus. If she had, she wouldn’t have handed over her history notebook so easily, blatantly forgetting that Evie wouldn’t find a single word running the length of the printed blue lines. But on the other hand, maybe Evie should have taken a minute to unwind from her school day as well, if  _she_  had, she would’ve remembered history and chemistry were housed in the same spiral, and that the “history” Mal would have to flip past on her way to chemistry had her face plastered all over it.  
  
Yet it was unconscious instinct that got the better of them, the way they automatically said yes to each other no matter what, no questions asked and no comments made. Mal at the desk with Evie’s notebook, Evie cross-legged on her bed with Mal’s notebook. The quiet flipping of pages, and then an even more profound quiet.  
  
Evie was no stranger to seeing her own face looking back at her, half of her life was spent in front of a mirror. However, there was something vastly different about seeing soft gray lines forming the line of her jaw and the natural flow of her hair.  
  
And Mal, with her Isle flair still showing in all her fashion choices, found the sight of herself drawn in glamorous evening gowns and preppy skirts an unusual (but not horrible) one. It struck her then like a bolt of lightning, how Evie was on the bed behind her with a spiral full of illicit drawings, a few of which may have kind of sort of fallen victim to Mal doodling tiny hearts around Evie’s head. They both jumped up to their feet at the same time, both guiltily clutching the borrowed notebooks to their chests in identical portraits of each other. Wide green eyes found wide brown ones, trying to gauge a reaction.  
  
“…I can explain,” Mal eventually said, wishing she could disappear into the wallpaper.  
  
“Really? I can’t,” Evie’s laugh was shy, adorable, nervous, many things rolled into one.  
  
No way on earth could she explain why Mal’s face was so front and center in her mind. Aside from the fact that it was pretty. And gorgeous. Beautiful and alluring and sexy and various other adjectives that all seemed to rhyme with “Mal”.  
  
Mal stepped closer to her, moving on autopilot away from the desk and towards Evie’s bed without even thinking about it. One foot after the other.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Mal thought to apologize, although she wasn’t quite sure why. “I just get lost in my thoughts and I…I draw you. Without even realizing it.”  
  
Because Evie was in her thoughts.  
  
“That doesn’t sound like something to be sorry for,” Evie noted. She had said she couldn’t explain, but she gave it a shot anyway. “The faces I put on my sketches are never anything special, but more and more lately…they’ve been you.”  
  
Mal’s mind made a brief detour back to that hallway alcove, pressed close to both Evie and a wall as a kiss silenced any and all explanations between them.   
  
“…I actually didn’t take any history notes today,” Mal lamely said.  
  
A funny declaration for her to fall on. Her mind must have made a wrong turn somewhere in coming back from that detour.  
  
“I can see that,” Evie’s head ducked down to hide a laugh, her hair falling into her face as she did so.  
  
Maybe her profound lack of homework help was what Mal really should have been apologizing for.  
  
“…I like to draw you, M,” Evie bravely told her. She hadn’t realized Mal had moved so close.  
  
“I like to draw you too.”  
  
Mal was just as brave as she lifted a hand and let her fingers do the tracing instead of her eyes, down the path of Evie’s jawline and to the sweet softness of her lips. Evie’s eyes slowly fell shut when Mal touched there, those cobalt lids hiding the stars dancing in dark topaz pools. It was very very hard for Evie to fight off an electric shiver, just as it was very very hard for Mal to fight off the urge to lean in and taste Evie for a moment, just for one.  
  
“You’re a nice subject,” Mal said.  
  
Evie’s eyes opened. Dancing stars turned into flickering flames, devilishly licking and lapping at Mal.  
  
“Nice? Just nice? And here I was, about to call you a beautiful one.”  
  
Unconscious reflexes and a lack of control of her hands were what got Evie into this mess in the first place, and said nuances apparently had no intention of getting her out of it as her hands cast a makeshift sketchbook aside and moved to hold Mal around the waist. With one single tug, one that Mal in no way fought, Evie brought them just inches apart, close enough to trace Mal’s lips not with her eyes or her fingers, but with her own. If she so fancied, that is. And oh, did she fancy.  
  
One little reach was all it would take for Mal to close that distance and indulge in her own fancy, to taste Evie on her lips for the rest of the day and fall asleep with dreams of her dancing through her head where sheep were supposed to play. But no. Mal would wait. For things grew much, much sweeter when there was time for the anticipation to be savored.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” Mal whispered, technically beating Evie to it.  
  
“Keep drawing me.”  
  
“I will,” Mal spoke without hesitation, very aware of the electricity sparking from Evie’s fingertips as she held her. Literal or metaphorical, it was hard to tell in Auradon.   
  
They miraculously escaped without a kiss, but not without a soft, careful nuzzle of noses.  
  
“…You’re beautiful too, Mal.”  
  
It was with reluctance that Mal slipped free of Evie’s hold, and with even greater reluctance that Evie let her hands fall to her side as she and Mal took a step back.  
  
Any other pair would’ve been met with awkward emptiness in the wake of a missed moment, but not Evie and Mal. They didn’t miss their moment, they simply saved it for later. Both of them walking away with smiles on their faces and warmth on their cheeks because they knew there  _would_ be a later. Mal would get that sunlit kiss, Evie would get Mal’s hand in hers as they strolled down the halls of Auradon Prep. Perhaps for today they missed out on history and chemistry—in the academic sense of the words, at least—but that didn’t matter to them, not at all.  
  
They were each other’s favorite subjects.


End file.
